


Night Terrors

by dimerization



Series: Feeling in the Pipeline [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M, Gore, Mass Effect 3, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary!Kaidan, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-13
Updated: 2014-10-13
Packaged: 2018-02-21 02:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2451080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimerization/pseuds/dimerization
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard has been struggling with PTSD since Cerberus resurrected her.  Between her painful death, the terrifying process of being brought back without her knowledge or consent, and the battle against the Collectors, the nightmares are beginning to take their toll.  She doesn't know how to talk to Liara about it, not after all this time, but she's seeing Kaidan now, and he's dealt with PTSD of his own...</p><p>Kaidan is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns in this series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Terrors

 Shepard’s not sure when the bad dreams became night terrors; she hasn’t slept right in so long that it all blurs together in her mind. She didn’t think it could get worse than the dreams after the slavers hit, watching her mother holding her guts in with her hands, dream after dream on a million different slaveships, a million different worlds, all imaginary, witnessing the horrors these nightmare aliens might be inflicting on her friends, her dad. Even the dreams after Akuze were nothing in comparison – if you keep the room warm and don’t use any blankets it’s not so hard to calm yourself down when you wake up wheezing for air, trying to claw your way out of a thresher maw’s gullet with your fingernails. Keep a light by your bed and open your eyes and stretch out your hand to touch the wall — see, it’s okay, you’re alive.

But these dreams are worse by far, with the false awakenings stacked up like matryoshka dolls. The sedatives Dr. Chakwas is making her take (yes, making — she’d never _seen_ her so angry — goddamn it Shepard you’re going to get yourself killed, you’ll get us all killed, the damn galaxy is depending on you you _need_ to _sleep_ you arrogant closed-off _bastard_ ,) well, the pills put her to sleep but they can’t stop her waking up again.

She can't say this, to Liara least of all, but she wakes herself up screaming night after night, rolling over to clasp her dreamed-up lover closer to her only to see Liara’s eyes staring back at her from a banshee’s twisted face, gnashing teeth inches from her throat. Jerking awake and reaching out to feel the empty bed beside her and finding instead that she’s wrist-deep in a ravager’s sac, hideous, collected rachni _bugs_ swarming up her arm. Heaving herself upright out of the nightmare, shaking, retching, looking wildly around her dark cabin as the husks moan and hammer at the door. Coming awake again in the dark with pain hammering through her veins, her view of the rushing stars overhead interrupted by Miranda Lawson’s perfect face, mouth an angry line as she orders the doctor to sedate her again — _don’t try to move, don’t try to move_. The sound wakes her and she curls around her pillow, covering her ears to drown out the shriek of a Collector particle beam tearing her ship in two. Fighting to breathe through the fear, forcing her eyes open to see Garrus with his face blown in half, cold and dead on her chest, or Kaidan seeping fluid from the wounds the dragon’s teeth leave, with reaper tech glinting behind their eyes, or Tali pulling away her mask to reveal a husk’s face, squatting on her chest like a grinning ghost. Every night she watches her people die; Chakwas starts upping her dose; she washes the pills down with booze when she can.

She’s not sure if bringing Kaidan back to the Normandy has made things better or worse — she sees the others in her nightmares less now, but sometimes she has nights when she watches them die over and over, nights when she wakes again and again to an indoctrinated Kaidan snarling the Illusive Man’s lies in their own voice, their hands locked around her throat. The first time she had that dream she was up and pacing for an hour, pouring herself a shot with shaking hands instead of running down past the night shift to drag them out of bed and cling to them in desperation, needing to feel their hands and their mouth and remember that they're nothing like that, nothing like that. The next morning they smiled at her in the corridor and said _Good morning Shepard_ and she shoved her hands into her pockets and asked them how they'd slept instead of grabbing them by the shoulders and kissing them in front of the entire bridge crew. When they stopped by her quarters one evening all they'd say was, “Karin said I should check up on you.”

"What for?" Shepard asked, raising her eyebrows.

“She wouldn’t tell me," they said with a shrug. She opened her mouth to tell them Chakwas worried too much, and then closed it again.

"Shepard..." They were standing so close, their hands on her shoulders; she shut her eyes. _Dammit, I can’t lie to this asshole._

"Come in, Kaidan. We can’t drink out in the hall." She’d meant to grab glasses and Scotch but somehow she wound up in their arms instead, leaning wearily on their chest, feeling their heartbeat through their shirt. They rubbed her back.

"What’s going on?" they murmured.

Shepard hadn’t cried in front of another person since the Alliance rescued her from the ruins of her childhood home. She put it down to fatigue and tried not to get angry with herself.

They sat together on her couch for a long time, curled up in the corner clinging to each other, trading stories of night terrors. She’d never investigated the abuse Kaidan had endured during biotic their training, partly out of respect for their privacy and partly because reading about what the Alliance had done to their own children made her want to dig the implants out of her nervous system with a knife. Kaidan, for their part, had never actually heard the details of what Cerberus had done to her, and went pale and haggard and wrapped her in a bear hug instead of tripping over themself apologizing again for everything they'd said on Mars. They started to suggest acupuncture for the stress, but stopped midsentence at the way her eyes went blank and hard. For a moment they both saw it, Miranda’s icy perfection, _Shepard, lie still, don’t try to move._  They heard the words as though she were in the room with them.

"Never mind," they said, and asked if there was anything they could do to help.

Kaidan stayed with her that night, mostly because she fell asleep on their lap halfway through the bottle of Scotch. They woke her up trying to stand without disturbing her.

"I’m too drunk to carry you to bed," they said.

"Well, we can’t have you staggering around the ship in that state, Major," she quipped, taking their hands and pulling them towards the bed. They laughed and helped her shrug out of her coveralls.

 _“I’m_ too drunk for a lot of things,” Shepard murmured, leaning on them as she undid their belt.

"That makes two of us then," and they kissed her.

They passed out tangled in the comforter, Shepard asleep on Kaidan’s chest. They woke up around six when she sat bolt upright, gasping.

"Hey," they mumbled, hazy with sleep and Scotch and a growing hangover. She turned without a sound and buried her face in their shoulder, her fingers locked around their biceps. They could feel her heart racing and dragged themself into wakefulness, rubbing her back, stroking her hair, telling her it was okay.

"I dreamed we were back on the Presidium — " She looked at them. "I dreamed I shot you."

They took her face between their hands.

"You didn’t," they said softly. "You once told me it could have gone a hundred different ways, and you were right. It didn’t happen like that. I’m here. I’m safe."

"None of us are safe," she said. They grimaced.

"Sorry."

"No, _I’m_ sorry.” Shepard sighed, dropping her head onto their chest again. “I could have done it, Kaidan. I could have killed you.” They wrapped their arms around her. “I would have regretted it every day, every minute for the rest of my life, but I would have done it.”

"No. No you wouldn’t have, Shepard. I’d never have made you."

"But — "

"I know. But I trusted you too much to do that, even then." They squeezed her tight. "You really think I’d take that bastard Udina’s word over yours?"

"Fucking jackass," Shepard muttered. Kaidan’s laugh vibrated through her whole body. They felt her smile against their collarbone.

"Ooh, time to sleep off this hangover," they said, rubbing their eyes with one hand. Shepard groaned.

"I was trying not to think about it, but yeah."

She dropped off quickly, much to Kaidan’s surprise. They had to wake her when the alarm went off.

"I didn’t dream," she whispered, and kissed them til the snooze cycled back around. Garrus cornered her in the elevator that afternoon and smirked a bit about her _dating_ , but the look in his eyes said he was weak with relief that someone was looking after her. _Christ, am I really that bad,_ she thought, her mouth curling, but when she saw the note from Kaidan saying to buzz them if she was having a bad night, she put her head down on her desk and held the tears in with her hands. _Screw it,_ she thought. _It doesn’t matter. It’ll all be over soon._


End file.
